Benjamin Sledge: Award Winning Author of Where Cowards Go to Die and Combat Wounded Veteran

Team Never Quit

Marcus Luttrell

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Education, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Self-improvement

4.9 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2022

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's Team Never Quit Podcast, Marcus has 11-year combat veteran and Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient, Benjamin Sledge in the studio. Benjamin served in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning 2 Army Commendation Medals. He lost his best friend in combat. These days, Benjamin is a viral writer, graphic designer, and author of Where Cowards Go to Die where he reveals a brutal portrait of war and the cost of returning to a country that no longer feels like home. He travels around the country educating businesses, non-profits, and churches about veterans’ mental health issues.

In this episode you will hear:

I got to see the best and worst parts of war. Often times we were the first ones in the door, so we either made friends or got shot.
I was 21 when I first got to the battle, thinking “I literally have no idea what I’m doing.”
There’s a very distinct smell to death. It’s like rotting meat dabbed with knockoff CK1 cologne.
Many combat veterans don’t necessarily come home with PTSD; it’s moral injury. It’s the physiological damage that occurs when you violate your sense of right and wrong.
Seeing death from that close does something to the mind. It became a real struggle point for me.
When I first got home, they didn’t know how to handle me, because I didn’t know how to handle myself. I was drinking myself silly, so I could get the images out of my head.
The strangest thing happened to me – I found myself missing war.
My wife left me while I was in Iraq.
War really is a spiritual experience.
What does it look like to live a courageous life and carry that into career and family relationships – Never give up, never accept defeat, and never leave a fallen comrade behind.
Inside every man, there’s both a warrior and a poet.

Support Benjamin
Website: https://benjaminsledge.com
Book (Where Cowards Go to Die): https://amz.run/5GAb
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benjamin.sledge/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benjamincsledge/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/benjamincsledge

Support TNQ
https://www.instagram.com/marcusluttrell/
https://www.instagram.com/andrewbrockenbush/
https://www.instagram.com/team_neverquit/

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Team Never Quit Podcast is sponsored by Navy Federal Credit Union.
0:03.6	At Navy Federal Credit Union, every day is Veterans Day.
0:06.2	Learn more at navyfederal.org slash veterans.
0:23.0	Alright everybody, welcome back to the TNG Podcast.
0:26.6	I'm your host, Marcus LaTrell.
0:28.6	Every week it's my job to fire you up to ignite the legend inside of you and to push you to your greatness.
0:34.6	Join me every week and I take you into my briefing room with some of the most hard charging people on the planet.
0:39.6	They're going to show you how to embrace the stuff of life, teach you the values of working your ass off,
0:44.6	and charge through whatever life throws at you.
0:46.6	This is the Team Never Quit Podcast.
0:49.6	Don't fuck a lot of buttercup.
0:58.6	What's going on everybody?
1:00.6	Welcome back to another episode of the Team Never Quit Podcast.
1:02.6	We've got a great guest line up for you guys today.
1:04.6	But before we do that, we like to kick these things off with our Patreon question of the day.
1:08.6	We're actually going live on our Patreon today.
1:10.6	I know you're not going to be knowing that when you listen to this episode because I'll be weeks in the future.
1:15.6	But still, we're going live. That's one of the cool things about our Patreon is that we do stuff like that.
1:20.6	Today's Patreon question of the day is, if you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?
1:28.6	Benjamin, you want to kick this off?
1:30.6	That's a great question.
1:31.6	Dead or alive?
	...

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